Luca brought the letter, the leaf was plucked from a wine growing up between the bricks of the mill, and Pollie, of course, was the light. Not that he was especially all that chewerful or bright feeling himself this day. But didn’t quite matter. Pollie’s light had never been about him. It had never been allowed to be about him. If it had, the consequences could havee been dire. Confidence, desire, hell—the possibility of an ego! No, no, the light had to be a failure in order for it to be contained.
“It’s not gonna work, Luc.” Pollie muttered. His cheery candy coating of false optimism had been sanded away along with his hope and his penchant for iced coffee.
Luca’s persistence was hanging on by a thread, but that was more than he could say for his brother. “It’s our only chance, Pollie. Now,” He thrust out his palm, runic tattoos covered by a layer of dirt. “Give me your hand.”
it's short yes, but i'm concussed i think so gimme a break <3
Beatrice, stowaway.
That's all it said. The page, ripped from some of those ledgers, the edges all soft and fuzzy with paper pulp. Other than the tail of a y and the speck of the base of a capital I, no other names were legible. But even without the evidence of the other names, it was clear–no one onboard was secret. Whatever espionage had gotten you on wasn't so clever. The only idiot you'd fooled was yourself.
"Well…" Clara stuffed the scrap into her trousers and crossed her arms.
"Fuck!" Tonya beamed, chest puffed out in pride at finishing the thought as she so often heard it. Clara swatted her shoulder and shushed her with a hiss, sidestepping the six year old to reach the ladder.
"We're all going to Hell for giving a kid such a dirty mouth." She muttered, striking a match from her bunk and lighting the lantern hung on a nail on the wall.
"Good," Bea tipped a cigarette into the flame before fastening the lantern shut. "Cause then we'll get to meet whoever let'er hit the rails in d'first place."
I spend a lot of time stoned because I don’t like myself. Plenty of people get high on marijuana for the euphoric effects because it calms them down and makes them more amiable. I take it because I’m a stowaway in my own mind.
You know what it’s like, don’t you, to not really know who you are at your core? We could be good, bad, and everything in between, but I know I’m nothing. I’m a mute standing at the stovetop, stirring a pot of soup, sipping it every now and again. It needs salt. It needs msg. It needs lithium.
My mind controls me, not the other way around. I feel either so strongly I need to break every bone in my body or nothing at all, and I’m just stirring the pot to have something to do. Not to actually create anything, no, just to stir. Clockwise seven times. Counterclockwise once. Repeat. I never really add anything. Just sip sip sip.
“Beatrice, don’t you have the doctors today?”
My head snapped up from where it was staring listlessly into my bowl of soggy cheerios. “Yeah, sorry, mom. Thanks.” I stood up and dumped the untouched cereal into the sink, listening to the angry churning of the garbage disposal. I took a puff off my vape, leaning deep into it, letting the molecules of THC bind to my blood and the weight of the world lift a little. Better.
I wandered outside to my car and climbed in, shutting the door. I didn’t bother brushing my teeth or putting on a bra; that all seemed like so much effort when I already had to drive myself to my morning doctor’s appointment and then come back to work on my Algebra assignment.
Math was not my strong suit, never had been. Honestly, math homework made me want to die more than existing did. Something about solving for x or y or using imaginary numbers made me want to bang my head into the wall above my bed.
I turned up the music, plugging in my aux cord until the song was louder than the thoughts in my head, and I could breathe again. Putting the car into reverse, I backed out of my driveway and drove out toward school. Drives like this were the best part of my day because I was alone, yes, but the music overwhelmed me.
The music settled my bones, settled the mania of my mind, and let me peek out occasionally to feel the colors on my skin like the sun racing behind parted clouds.
I want to cry so hard that I choke, til I shake my mind loose from its moorings. My eyes are dry, and my chest is still. My heart beats steadily. My fingers grip the steering wheel as tight as the corded knots in my back.
You see, it happened again. Whether I’m stoned or not, people still don’t like me. I got ghosted again, something beautiful that has happened since time began. When someone doesn’t have the courage or capacity to confront someone about how deeply unlikeable they are, they ghost them. They disappear out of their life like they never were, with no explanation or goodbyes, no real closure for the person affected.
My therapist, Janice, tells me that no one owes anyone an explanation but that she gets why it is such a huge trigger for me. For someone who spent their childhood unwanted and abused, bullied and left to rot, someone exiting my life so unceremoniously affects me deeper than others.
I’m trying to get over it, get over Sam, but I really liked her. We’d hung out almost every day for the last six months, chatting and bingeing shows on Netflix. She kissed me like she meant it, hungry. I’d felt ecstatic to connect with her, someone so human. Obviously, it was never going to last, but I didn’t know it would end so abruptly. I wasn’t even sure the last time we’d had sex. Was it after we’d finished Downton Abbey or after our ice cream date?
That was it. That was part of the problem; I had a memory like a sieve and spent all my time panning for gold, trying to remember the little bits that made me a person. We’d had a fight, and Sam, with her big poofing curls pulled back into two cute little clouds surrounding her head, brown eyes warm but angry.
“It’s like you’re not even here, Bea,” she’d told me, her voice worn at the edges. “Like I see you, I feel you, but it’s all empty.”
“I am here,” I’d pleaded with her, but we both felt the hollowness in my voice, the lack of something vital to make it believable.
Her amber eyes shined with tears as she stood up from the kitchen table and then turned away. “Do you even care?”
“Of course I do.” I cared more about her than I had in a long time about anyone and felt connected to her so strongly it choked me up. But none of that came across when I spoke.
“It’s like you’re not even a part of the team here. It’s just me, and you’re a stowaway, and that doesn’t make a partnership.”
I didn’t say anything. What was the point?
“I need space.”
So I gave it to her. I gave her the space she asked for. I watched a whole season of Stranger Things on my own before I texted her again, and she never replied. I didn’t understand I had been ghosted at first, so I pathetically texted her a few more times before the message hit home: she was done with me.
The one person who really made me feel anything, who had made me feel safe in my own skin for once, dropped me as easily as if I hadn’t meant anything to her. It was as if our relationship had been just a passing fancy.
And honestly? She was right. There was nothing to me, and I was just a stowaway, locked in the travesty of my own mind.
I pulled into the parking lot of my therapist’s office and put the car into park with a jerk. The tears wanted to come now, of course, that way, I could walk in there and show Janice my pain, prove that I really had felt something for Sam. That I could make Janice believe me even if I couldn’t prove it to Sam.
God, what was wrong with me? My girlfriend had ghosted me, and I was still thinking about her like there was something to prove. I had trouble letting go, and Janice said it had to do with my personal trauma.
I needed people to like me to fill some void, mainly because I didn’t like myself. I could hear her voice in my head even as I walked into her office, reprimanding me for ruminating on all the wrong things to help me heal.
I checked in with the lady at the front desk, wiping away the tears beading in the corner of my eyes. She pretended not to notice. My phone was in my hand, and I opened up her messages, typing in the dreaded i miss u. I didn’t send it. I didn’t want her to be put in the awkward position of having a stalker, someone who couldn’t take a hint. But the desire to send it was so powerful that I swallowed and shoved my phone into my back pocket. I was weak, but I wasn’t stupid.
“You keep allowing yourself to build all these impossible feelings inside,” Janice said, rambling on. “You build these relationships with people, these commitments, but fail to express them properly. Then when they disappoint you, you blame yourself.” She sighed, scribbling something on her yellow legal pad.
“You’re disappointed,” I grumbled, sinking into her white leather couch.
“What I feel is honestly irrelevant, Beatrice. You need to wake up and realize that instances like this are going to keep happening until you take control of your life.”
snowghoul
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